I Make The Call

Archive for the ‘NCAA’ Category

It is a forgone conclusion that the SEC is the best conference in college football and has been so for sometime.

The SEC is led by Alabama, followed by Florida and LSU. Arkansas will surprise many of the other teams.
The ACC, loaded with quarterbacks just like the PAC 10 will be led by FSU, yes I said FSU. Only Virginia Tech and possibly Miami will be able to compete with the Noles.

Everyone thinks that Texas will be top dog in the big 12. Not so fast my friends. There will be a new sheriff in town called the Cornhuskers, backed up by deputy Sooners.

Going out west to the PAC 10 which is loaded with quarterbacks, Oregan and Oregan State will remain the alpha dogs out there on the left coast. Washington State will show glimpses, followed by ineligible USC.

Coming back to the middle of the country to the Big 10, Ohio State, Iowa and Michigan State will be fighting it out for who goes to the Rose Bowl, but watchout for Wisconsin.

Back on the right coast, the Big East will be led by the Pitt Panthers, followed by Cincinnati and West Virginia. When it is all said and done, and every top ten team will have atleast one loss, the championship game will be between Alabama and Boise State. I MAKE THE CALL.

When Lane Kiffin bolted for USC and an opportunity to return to his roots, he left Tennessee in the lurch and broken promises to his players. Was it a good move?. I don’t think so.

The NCAA came down hard on the Trojans and there will be no post season activities for them for the next few years.

Kippin leaving Tennessee left Derek Dooley to right the Vols ship. I think that Dooley will bring the Vols back to prominence quicker than most people think.

Jimbo Fisher should have the easiest fix. He has been with the Seminoles for a while and has retained most of his players when Bobby Bowden retired at the end of last season.

Joker Phillips at Kentucky will have a hard time bringing Kentucky to the forefront, simply because the SEC is so strong, and he definitely has to rebuild. On the other hand, Turner Gill leaving Buffalo for Kansas should be able to compete in the big 12 soon to be another big 10 come next year with a couple of schools leaving for other conferences.

This brings me to who will be the most scrutinized coach in all of NCAAF this season: the one and only Brian Kelly leaving Cincinnati for Notre Dame. To coach at the Golden Dome, or touch down Jesus University as it is sometimes referred to, one has to be a Lou or and Ara.

They are the only two coaches who stood the test of time in South Bend. I wonder if Brian would have been better off staying at Cincinnati.

Tommy Tubberville of all the new coaches will have a cake walk. Texas Tech is virtually the same time as last season and will be one of those teams that can really compete for a BCS Bowl Birth. I MAKE THE CALL.

Anybody with the lease bit of common sense knows that the NCAA is a money making machine for the colleges and universities.

You can blame the student athletes for any and every infraction imposed on their respective institutions, while coaches and athletic directors walk away free with big increases in salaries and even bonuses.

The student gets nothing but suspension or dismissal.

When are we going to stop blaming the athletes for what goes wrong and begin placing the blame exactly where it belongs?

The blames lies soley with the people in charge. Do you really think that Pete Carroll wanted to leave his cushy job at USC and move to Seattle? I don’t think so. He saw the hand writing on the wall and he knew that serious sanctions were coming down, so he bolted to the NFL. I would also if I knew that I was going to be caught with that many infractions.

Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy is being returned. A championship season will become null and void, Mike Garrett will get his full retirement with  benefits, and Pat Haden will now be asked to cleanup the mess.

I have one question for the NCAA: are you ever going to learn? I MAKE THE CALL.

Unless I am Rip Van Winkle, asleep at the switch for all of last year’s college football season, there is no question that Ndamukpng Suh is the better defensive tackle in the entire draft.

There are two things that Suh and McCoy have in common. They are defensive tackles and play in the Big Twelve Conference, and the similarities end there. Suh is the better tackle. He should be the number one pick of the draft. Any team having the opportunity to draft Suh and passes, come Sundays in the fall, will live to regret it. I MAKE THE CALL

If I were a betting man, and took outrageous odds, I still would not have picked Butler to go to the final four. You would have to be insane to even think about it. Guess what fans, Butler is going to the final dance come Monday. They have made a believer out of me so I am picking them for the big upset.

Why? I haven’t a clue, but I do know that Butler’s big three matches up with Duke’s big three and that alone gives them a chance for the upset. You will have Scheyer, Singler and Smith versus Hayward, Howard and Veasley.

Both front lines have a little beef, but Hayward is superior. Butler can’t shoot like they did against Michigan State, relying soley on free throws. They must be that same kind of defense, but keep the Blue Devils from making three pointers, and that will be very hard to do.

For Butler to win, they must shoot around 49% and keep Howard out of foul trouble. I MAKE THE CALL.

Let’s be for real. If you average 30 wins per season over the last 4 years, can you really be considered to be a Cinderella at the big dance?

Collier laid the infrastructure years ago. Coach Stevens just continued with the maintenance and replacement parts.

I must say that he did one hell of a job with the program. The problem with the other teams is that none of them took Butler seriously.

Well, they are in the final four and of all the teams still standing, Butler is the only one that is at home. For the rest of the pundits, other than UCLA, 1972, who can top that. I MAKE THE CALL.

What would it feel like if you were given the chance to play at home in the NCAA Basketball Tourney?

Butler can do it if this little university of 4,500 students beats Kansas State on Saturday. Butler has the longest winning streak, 23 games, the next closes is Ohio State.

These Bulldogs, and that is exactly what they were last night, when they bit Syracuse, the number one team in that region. Yes, the number 5 team, bit into the number one team and took them out.

Butler got 23 points off 18 turnovers by the Orangemen and for the first time in school history are into the Elite 8. I MAKE THE CALL.

Of the 16 teams left at the big dance, three of them are double digits seeds. St Mary’s seeded 10, Washington 11 and the darling of the dance, Cornell seeded 12.

One can make the argument that they were seeded to low, but the fans up in Ithica, New York are having the time of their lives. No one expected an Ivy League to go this far. It has been 31 years for any Ivy League to come this far, and Jeff Foote, the center and guards Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale are feeling no pain.

Coach Donahue is the only remaining Philly coach at the big dance and he is definitely enjoying this ride.

Yes, they will meet Kentucky the fastest and least experience team left in the tournament, but sometimes, old age and cohesiveness overcome youth and skill. I am giving Cornell a chance to win, but only if they are able to turn the game into a half court game. Other than that, Kentucky will run them out of the arena. I MAKE THE CALL.

Can anyone tell me what Northern Iowa’s Mascot is? I bet you can’t. The only person of note that came out of Northern Iowa that we all know is Curt Warner, retired quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals.

Last Night, a junior guard whose first name is Ali, and I refuse to even attempt to pronounce or spell his last name, was David who slew Goliath. The Jayhawks were the overall number one in the field of 65, but was cut down by ninth seeded Northern Iowa, 69 to 67. This beat down left the door open for Kentucky to take it all the way to Indianapolis. I MAKE THE CALL.

Okay, the Hokies were left out of the big dance, but Georgia Tech with a worst win loss record who the Hokies beat head to head are in.

What’s up with that? Like Bobby Knight said, both team should have been invited.

When asked by the media, Coach Seth Greenburg would not speak to who should have been left out.

Like the gentleman that he is, he simply said speaking on that issue was left to the sports pundits and that he had no right to spoil anyone’s joy that was invited to the big dance.

Now, is that class or what?

Even though he felt that the Hokies should have been invited, he had no ill feelings for the team that might have caused his team a chance to play in the big tournament.

I do believe that Virginia Tech Hokies should have been invited and at the same time wonder why Utah State and Wake Forest were invited.

Somewhere along the way, the Selection Committee missed a turn. I MAKE THE CALL.